After a three-year hiatus that’s sent hundreds of low-income mental health patients to local emergency rooms for care, Sacramento County is back in the crisis stabilization business.

Hospitals are cheering the news that an “intake stabilization unit” opened Monday at the Sacramento County Mental Health Treatment Center on Stockton Boulevard.

The doors aren’t wide open — the unit only accepts patients transferred from local emergency rooms — but hospitals herald the move as a significant step toward relief from the financial and emotional drain of holding psychiatric patients for hours or days who can be treated more appropriately elsewhere.

Local hospitals have lost millions of dollars boarding the patients in ERs and adjacent hallways while patients forego the specialized care they need.

“We are hoping the intake stabilization unit will be an outlet for many of these patients to go to the mental health treatment center — a place where they can be handled until they go home or are placed,” Seamons said. “Everybody is trying to make this work because we know the population is fragile.”

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